Category: Blog

I have more than five hundred friends on fb and many of you may have as many as five thousand. But I don’t personally know more than a hundred of my ‘friends’. Do you know all your ‘friends’?

When I scroll down fb, I come across innumerable stories. If they are some news links, I sometimes tend to read them. Most of the posts are personal opinions, comments and jokes. Sometimes I catch them. Most of the times I don’t. I have started feeling little uncomfortable with fb of late, but I am not still convinced to quit it.

I face two kinds of difficulties. One is to do with the flurry of news items I am bombarded with. Neither do I send to nor receive friend ‘requests’ from someone whom I don’t find having some similarities in views. Think of the phrase itself, ‘friend request’. Do we befriend someone in our acquaintances by requesting them. It naturally happens, no? Maybe, that naturalness is mechanized in fb. This is a world you can be a potential friend of anyone. How easy it is! Coming back to what I was saying, since my friends are such, the news items I come across in fb are mostly of darker shades. Someone was lynched in this part of the country; somebody was raped in the other part of the country; someone else was wrongfully jailed for years on end. I have to read such news items every time I open fb. And I feel angry and sad that this is the state of affairs in my country. Not just that, I feel I become constantly agitated against this predicament. Ssho, I don’t want that.

The second issue is about the posts I come across my friends on my wall. They rage and rail against the plight of this country. Not just that, they have an opinion on most of the things that matter. They sometimes talk about the dubious statements of some political leaders; other times, they reflect on Hindutva is ghettoising Muslims and Dalits; still other times, they comment on the alleged involvement of an actor in an abduction and molestation case. Basically, most of them have opinions on everything. I fail to make opinions on everything here and I don’t want to. So, sometimes I am even at my wit’s end to make sense of what others are talking about. They just write two sentences on something that I don’t have any idea about and amass likes and reactions. They don’t even explain what they are referring to. Just to let them know that I am also a friend of them, I push the ‘like’ button or send out ‘love’.

Do we have ‘real real’ friends on fb? Some of us may have, and I myself have benefited from being fb friends. But the kind of toll the I have to take just to remain friends is too much.

The only state of mind I can harbor on fb is of a frustrated citizen of India. Could it be that nothing good happens in this country? Or, is it that I am surrounded with citizens who are conscientious of the future of this country and worried about it? Latter, the batter!

You may say I can quit fb then. But then where will I share this post other than in fb and twitter? That is why I am still here.

I have wandered the streets, nooks and corners and alleys of Saint Petersburg with Raskolnikov. I have felt tremors and numbness in my legs when I had to accompany him to the old-lady’s room. I have often got entangled in the arguments of Mitya, Vanya and Alyosha and lost in thoughts. But how I met Dostoyevsky himself is rather a pleasant memory of my undergraduate days.

You may all have stories of how you found your own much-loved writers. My story took its beginning when I was an undergraduate student of English literature.

If my memory serves right, I started reading literary texts when I was in eighth standard. I was fortunate to have a friend who was six years elder to me at that time. He was instrumental in orienting my readings into thicker, longer versions of the stories I unearthed in the little magazines.

Both of us were huge book-lovers and have gone to various libraries on foot, trekking for miles, walking on the mud-parapets, crossing the paddy fields. He prompted me to read books like Asuravitth, Ummaacchu, Sundharikalum Sundharanmaarum.

The memories of going to various libraries are etched in my mind. This particular library where I met Dostoevsky was in a sorry state. It was not actually a library, but one displaced to a stitching institute owing to lack of funds. It did not have a regular staff and most of the times it remained closed. One lady was entrusted to look after it, but she hardly turned up. Many authors, from Dickens to Thomas Hardy to Vaikom Muhammed Basheer enjoyed the rhythm of scissors, that too from the hands of adorable damsels. Basheer would have written secret letters to them, for sure. He would have been the most sensitive to be intoxicated by the scents of oil and talcum powder filling the room.

There were two, three big shelves of books in no order. It was a library which lost its glory and the authors in the shelves felt claustrophobic. The occasional, lucky readers sometimes gave these authors an outing. It was in such chaos that I met Dostoyevsky in ‘Choothaattakkaaran’ (The Gambler). He was a big gambler himself who gave everything to the game.

when I reached home and started reading the book, I was overcome by an unprecedented emotional turmoil. I used to be an avid reader then, who would not care for anything including food. I could just lie down in my bed and read for hours together. Now, such marathon readings seem unachievable, maybe you enjoy the book differently when you are older.

Once I finished the novel, I could not control my emotions. I was literally jumping in my room out of psychic explosion. When I felt that I would be unable to contain my feelings, I dressed myself and ran to the public telephone booth. I had a mobile phone then. Maybe there was no balance, I am not sure. I called up one of my graduation friends who was as crazy as me over books.

We had this strange habit of calling each other in the middle of reading, if we are overwhelmed by certain passages. Mostly, I used to call him. Then, I would read out the passages that touched me. Then, we would discuss n-number of things about the book each of us has been reading. We were lovers through books.

I do not exactly remember what all I talked to him about The Gambler. But I am sure I spilled my beans for more than half an hour and he patiently listened to all my outpourings. I would have told him how much I felt like pulling Dostoyevsky from the gambling table, just to put some sense into his ears. Or, how much I enjoyed being at the table with him, as agitated as he was! Or, I would have joined in his cursing his luck at one moment, and the instant consolation that being part of the game is more important, not winning. I would have felt pity for his sufferings and envied his resilience in hardships.

You might remember the chilling hollowness you felt on a giant wheel or on a swing when it came downwards. The regale, hoot and boo on the way up quickly turn into nervousness, fear and screaming. I remember holding the iron bars in front of me with gritted teeth. Do you feel this gripping nothingness in other times? Maybe this sudden experience is felt in our quite ordinary lives in an extended manner. The nervousness, fear and restlessness are painted in broad strokes in our canvases.

I grew up in a Muslim family where doing namaz on time was an established practice from the word go. I went to madrasa when I was five years old; I began my schooling in the same year too. Madrasa started at seven in the morning and dispersed at nine thirty. I studied till the eighth standard. In Kerala, Muslim students, both boys and girls, go to madrasa at this age. I learned how to do namaz, recite Koran, how to behave as a Muslim and little bit of details about Prophet Muhammad.

Then just after my tenth, I was encouraged to join a religious institution where both religious and non-religious education was imparted. For ten months, I acted that role, with a turban on my head, white full sleeve shirt and dhoti. When I felt enough is enough, I somehow saved my skin from there. Not only my parents but also my relatives, and even people in my neck of the woods who otherwise wouldn’t say even ‘hi’ expressed regret in me leaving the ‘good path’.

It was during my graduation, long past madrasa and just over with higher secondary school that I came to read books that were considered bad. I particularly remember a night when my mother was so much agonised to see a book on agnosticism in my hand. She considered it a bad book to read and gave half hour lecture on why a Muslim like me should not read such books. But I have been reading them since then.

A year and a half ago, I asked my younger brother (he was in tenth standard then) why he was doing namaz five times. Quite innocently he said, ‘everybody does it, mother does it, father does it’. Then I told him that he was not do the prayers because others were doing it. ‘If you feel like doing it, then only you should do it’, I said. For my unlucky hour, he stopped praying thereafter. After a week or so, he was caught by my mother. He stated, ‘if elder brother does not do prayers, then why I should’.

I did not know all these incidents apart from the coldness I felt in my mother’s conversations thereafter. Then after a few months, I visited home. I learned that she had already thrown away a packet of green tea that I had taken home last time. She said, ‘if my son does not live like a Muslim, then I do not need anything from him’. I could not help falling for such blackmailing. After all, she is my mother. I did not want to hurt her.

This episode was followed by endless days of discussions when I would try to convince her that I had asked that question to my younger brother as part of my research. I just wanted to know how we come to believe and practice the way we do. I am not entirely sure whether I was successful in convincing her, because she became more attentive to me doing prayers.

When I am at home, it is literally hell. Sometimes I do imagine that I am doing some exercises while doing prayers. When your mother cribs five times a day at prayer times, it is not easy to make sleight of hand. On Fridays, I mostly go out early in the morning to avoid going for Friday prayer. But on some Fridays, I do go to the mosque. It is funny how strong and claustrophobic our social institutions are!

Whenever I am at Delhi, one of the queries in my conversations with my mother is about namaz. She would ask whether I did the last prayer. Alas! I am an inveterate liar when it comes to this.

Things have been fine so far. We usually value peace of mind to anything else, no!